Crisanta Knight: The Severance Game

CHAPTER 1 BEGINNINGS-1

Beginnings

hey say the calm comes before the storm. What they don’t say is why.

Maybe it’s the world’s way of drawing you in to a false sense of security. Or maybe the world never knew devastation was imminent, and was just as surprised as you were when chaos streaked the sky.

Up ’til now my life had by no means been a picnic, but I had experienced the good fortune of having wonderful friends who I never fought with and never doubted.

I’d met SJ and Jason on my first night at Lady Agnue’s School for Princesses & Other Female Protagonists. Blue had joined our gang two years later when her protagonist book appeared, courtesy of the Author, and she’d enrolled at Lady Agnue’s as well. If I disregarded the newest addition to our group, Daniel (which I so often preferred to do), the four of us had been pretty tight knit for a while.

Little did I know our easygoing friendship was but another calm before a storm. And little did I know that the “why” behind this particular storm would be my own actions.

At the moment the clouds were beginning to brew (figuratively and literally). Gray manifestations of coldness were coming across the late twilight sky as steadily as they were encircling our group. As they stirred, I found my mind wandering to brighter days—memories, beginnings, milestones. In particular, my thoughts drifted to the eventful evening when I’d first met SJ and Jason.

I couldn’t say why I let the recollection consume me so vividly. Maybe the hesitation I felt toward my friends in the aftermath of today’s events had me feeling guilty, and my subconscious was trying to remind me that, given our history, trusting my friends should have been the easiest thing in the world.

Or maybe I was just bored. After all, it’s not like you get complimentary snacks or inflight entertainment while riding a Pegasus.

I very clearly remembered my first interactions with Jason and SJ six years ago. In all my life I had never felt so crowded, yet so alone.

The giant hallway intersection of Lady Agnue’s was bustling with activity. Most of the other ten-year-old, first-year students were huddled around the Treasure Archives, admiring their magnificence. I did not join the herd. I was sure there would be time to regard our ancestors’ fairytale relics later. I would be attending this school until I was eighteen, after all.

Besides, despite being Cinderella’s daughter, the treasures displayed in those cases weren’t so much exciting to me as they were annoying. From Aladdin’s genie lamp to my own mother’s glass slipper, they were shiny reminders of every tradition I was walking in the shadow of.

I hung around the back of the room, leaning against one of the cold, grand windows that allowed moonlight to spill through. Its ghostly glow caught on the shimmering material of my light purple gown, particularly the smooth, pearly beads that decorated its bodice.

I looked on at the myriad of first-year girls flocking the space. The school seamstresses had made each of us a custom gown in preparation for our first ball at Lady Agnue’s tonight. How they’d divined our sizes ahead of time, I did not know. Maybe our parents had sent them in. Or maybe it was just a “one size fits all” deal and if you happened to be a plus-sized protagonist you were out of luck.

I clawed at the uncomfortable corset of my dress. None of the girls here had even hit puberty; why in Book was it necessary to wear dresses that defined our waists when most of us didn’t even have waists?

It was frustrating, but at least I wouldn’t have to wear the dress for very long. While my mother’s famous ball had expired at the stroke of midnight, the first-year students only had to be at tonight’s ball for an hour in the middle. It would be kind of silly for us to be present for more than that. None of us knew how to dance yet; our formal ballroom training didn’t start until our second year. And it wasn’t like any of us were keen on the boy-girl socializing aspect of such functions. We were all still in our respective “boys are gross, girls are strange” stage of life.

The lot of us younglings from Lady Agnue’s and Lord Channing’s were instructed to meet in front of the Treasure Archives at eight o’clock, at which time the Damsels in Distress (D.I.D.) teacher, Madame Lisbon, would escort us inside and teach us about ball decorum, fanciness, and other things I didn’t care about.

I sighed as I stared on at the masses.

I would have been lying if I’d said I wasn’t worried about the journey ahead. I’d been looking over my course schedule for this semester and was as far from thrilled as physically possible. I mean, Grace for Beginners, Singing with Nature, A Young Lady’s Guide to Diction—forget graduating at the top of my class, I’d be lucky if I didn’t get bored to death before my adult molars came in.

It didn’t help that the only courses that did intrigue my interest were off limits. Stuff like Boomerangs for Beginners, Tracking in Nature, and A Young Tomboy’s Guide to Tomahawks were classes exclusively for the common protagonists at my school. I was told that in later years I might be able to take more stimulating electives. However, in the meantime I was doomed to an academic curriculum that had the equivalent excitement of dry toast.

In spite of all this, as I stood there and fiddled with the fabric of my dress, what filled me with the most anxiety was the realization that I might have to go through this alone.

It was true a lot of kids here didn’t know each other, especially the common protagonists. While the children of royals tended to meet one another at some point as a result of our parents’ friendships, common protagonists did not have that advantage. Common protagonists were either Half-Legacies (the relatives of non-royal fairytale characters) or new protagonists entirely—chosen by the Author for a greatness yet to be determined.

Yet, despite their lack of familiarity with one another, I could already see friendships starting to form, particularly between roommates.

This made sense. When you were dropped off at a brand new boarding school—ripped away from everything and everyone you were accustomed to—your immediate reaction was to attach yourself to somebody going through the same. Sort of a safety in numbers, we’re-in-this-together kind of thing.

Alas, I had not been afforded such a luxury. After arriving at Lady Agnue’s with my mother, I’d learned that I’d been assigned two roommates. Both were Legacies (protagonists whose parents had been protagonists and royals), and one of them I already knew.

The girl in question was Princess Mauvrey Weatherall. She was the daughter of Sleeping Beauty, and because of our kingdoms’ close proximity and parents’ congenial relationship, we’d already known each other for a long time.

From what I could remember she hadn’t been so bad at first. But apparently evil and narcissism were characteristics that needed to lie dormant for a while before fully manifesting. Because in recent times this golden-blonde princess had fine-tuned a unique kind of malice that would’ve made a mutilated magic hunter look sweet.

She hadn’t spoken to me since we’d arrived at school (unless you count getting shoved out of the way to our shared bathroom as talking). If so, after she pushed me aside in her haste to get ready for the ball, I’d definitely done my share of “talking back.”

Needless to say the girl and I were not bonding.

In her case our lack of roommate connection didn’t matter. She appeared to be doing just fine in the friend department. Although she was about as kind as an eel, her inherent princess charm gave off a conductive spark that drew others toward her. I didn’t know if the electricity cackling in her personality and dangerously sharp blue eyes were inspiring the other princesses to listen to her out of faith or fear, but they were drawn to her circle either way. And as a result, I knew with every passing minute my chances at befriending them were slipping. Mauvrey would not hesitate to get a jump on spreading word about my weirdness. She was just vicious enough to view poisoning the other girls’ opinions of me as a sport. And thus far it wasn’t hard to tell she was winning.

With this unfortunate turn of events, I held onto the hope that my other roommate was not going to be so blind or catty. Though I didn’t allow that hope to get very high. For my second roommate was to be Snow White Jr. (And yes, I do mean the daughter of that Snow White.)

I’d never met the princess before. But given her lineage, her appearance, and the shocking number of glittery dresses in her suitcase, I had a feeling we weren’t meant to mesh well.

Looking at her now, I was all but sure of it. She’d gotten here extra early and was following Madame Lisbon around asking questions, offering to help, and carrying the professor’s pre-ball checklist. Her dress was silver silk and incomparably graceful. Her face looked pale and cold like an antique doll. And her long black mane was braided neatly behind her, unlike my own brown hair, which fell thickly and thunderously around my face.

It may have been rash to judge her off the bat like that, but after growing up around princesses like Mauvrey I didn’t have any evidence to support the possibility that she might be different. Whether she was or not, though, I still hadn’t had the chance to verify.

By the time I found our room this afternoon she had already left for the two o’clock tour of the school. I had been forced to miss that tour and take a much later one because our headmistress, Lady Agnue, held me back to scold me after orientation. I’d helped myself to the snacks before the program started, which apparently was some kind of major transgression.

She said she would think of a punishment appropriate for the crime and get back to me. As such, I was doing my best to avoid her. Mom would flip if she found out I’d gotten into mischief on my first day, let alone my first hour at school. She’d asked me at least a dozen times on our way over here to do my best to keep out of trouble. Granted, I think she suspected that with my bold nature and disinclination toward obedience I might not be able to avoid it and would inevitably provoke difficulty. But she also hoped for the best.

Me? I wasn’t sure what I hoped for when it came to my development at this school.

The brochure in our welcome packet stated my path pretty clearly. I was meant to follow convention and become everybody’s idea of a proper princess. But despite being only ten years old, I already had a strong enough sense of myself to know this probably wasn’t going to work out.

I did want to be a good princess someday, but not in the way this school or my realm deemed fit. Moreover, I didn’t want to be limited by the role. My brothers had attended Lord Channing’s School for Princes & Other Young Heroes and were trained to be valiant protagonists. So, much as I did truly want to make my princess-ness my own, my greatest hope was that I might someday combine that with something more, that I might somehow branch out and be part of a new breed, a stronger kind of archetype—a hero-princess, if you will.

Sadly, I seemed to be alone in thinking I could achieve such a thing. As it stood, most of the other princesses in my year were already starting to avoid me due to Mauvrey’s warnings of my weird personality. The common female protagonists in our class, meanwhile, didn’t seem to want me near them either. I may have been a different kind of princess, but to them I was still a princess, and therefore my presence in their circles weirded them out just as much. Evidently I was too much combat boot for the prissy girls and too much glitter for the tough ones.

I absentmindedly tugged on one of the silver pumpkin earrings hanging from my ears and turned my back on the noise and clutter to look out at the grounds.